As Tim Willis from Space Marine 2 said:
“We don’t need to sell four million units to make it [Space Marine 2] a success,” Willits said. “There are many games, sadly, especially out of North American developers, where if you do not sell five million copies you are a failure. I mean, what business are we in where you fail if you sell less than five million?”
So, the scheme is basically to have you, the publisher, invest some money into marketing the game, to get potential players aware of it, then have them pay a one-time premium to actually play it, if they’re interested.
Sorry that doesn’t drive MAU, DAU, or ARPPU. Also we want users on our walled garden data harvesting service that’s just “Steam but Worse”, so I’m afraid you need to close your studio. What’s that? Sorry you’re breaking up, must be something wrong with the phone here in the Swiss Alps. Ok ta ta.
If that’s not the business model, then I’m honestly not playing it.
And while I may be outnumbered by children playing Fortnite obsessively, at this stage of life I do have more money than gaming time.
There’s more to game development than that. Setting, art style, gameplay loop, interface…
The argument being made is that a “proven” mechanism for monetization is getting in the way of developing other attributes of gameplay, as the
- get potential players aware of it
and
- then have them pay
Steps are made the focus of design, and only known existing formulas for the above encourage the
- invest some money
step.
Business majors ruin everything, part 8378384748
So this guy was at the top of Sony America until 2018 and now there’s suddenly a lack of creativity in the industry? Please.
He’s the strategic advisor at Tencent Games now, so I’m sure he’s all over creativity there…
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
It’s an abuse of how games work and what games are.
Only legislation will fix this. If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
Exactly, the moment things cost real money in the game, the design of the game changes to increase likelihood of spending. Guild Wars 2 e.g. sells increased inventory space…and it fills your inventory with so many crap items that you’ll constantly be managing your inventory without the extra space.
At least you can improve inventory in-game (eg: do normal gameplay quest and crafting stuff to get bigger bags). Some monetization is cash or nothing.
Still bad when they make something annoying and then charge to fix it.
Guild wars 2 specifically has a surprising amount of quality of life stuff for free, but you can see places where “we can make money here” won out occasionally.
And you’ll get dick-riders going ‘but inventory management is gameplay, like in survival horror!’
Okay. So why can you pay five actual dollars to play the game less?
I found UFO 50 pretty creative. Maybe it’s not the problem of creativity. It’s the problem of monopolistic gaming companies run by people that don’t like games.
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Or, exactly what I said? I guess you didn’t read the article either by your logic.
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It’s literally in the title. You don’t even have to read the article.
Laughs as I remember pumping endless quarters to continue in old cabinet arcade games.
But just imagine how much more money they would have got out of you if you could also add a couple of extra quarters to change your character’s outfit
Fucking horse armor. Fucking dumbasses who bought it.
“Come on bruv, it’s just 2.50, what’s the harm!”
Now a single skin for a single character is the price of an entire game, or multiple games in the case of the newest Jinx skin for league of legends, thanks.
Shawn, bro… not to say it’s your fault, but it started with you
I’ll say it. He’s definitely at least partially responsible for this situation that he’s complaining about now.
Ya think?
